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In her seminal essay 'Causality and Determination', Elizabeth Anscombe very decidedly announced that "physical indeterminism" is "indispensable if we are to make anything of the claim to freedom". But it is clear from that same essay that she extends the scope of that claim beyond freedom–she suggests that indeterminism is required already for animal self-movement (a position recently called 'agency incompatibilism' by Helen Steward). Building on Anscombe's conception of causality and (in)determinism, I will suggest that it extends even further: life as such already requires physical indeterminism. Furthermore, I show that we can, on this basis, arrive at the idea of varieties of (in)determinism, along with a corresponding variety of incompatibilist theses. From this Anscombean vantage point, the free will discussion takes on a quite different outlook. The question whether free agency can coexist with determinism on the level of blind physical forces, which preoccupies the philosopher of free will, turns out to conflate a whole series of compatibility questions: not just whether life is compatible with physical determinism, but also whether animal self-movement is compatible with 'biological determinism', and whether free agency is compatible with 'animal determinism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Steady advances in neuroscience have shaped understanding of brain and mind, in ways that challenge spiritual belief and can amplify misconceptions about biological determinism. The inability to reconcile spirituality and science risks faith being construed as "out of touch" with reality, and in worst‐case scenarios engendering clinical‐level crises of hope. The latter typically involve three central issues: the free will problem, desperate perceptions about mortality, and the constraint of individual identity. Here, we synthesize contemporary scientific and philosophical understanding to propose a reconciliation of faith and science of particular relevance to preservation of hope. In this approach, we review the compatibility of natural causation and human freedom, parameterize "meaning" on the basis of specific opportunities for decision‐making within the timeframe of a lifetime, and articulate a model of self‐transcendence predicated on these principles and on observed characteristics of human love. This model resides within "common ground" for faith and science by avoiding unnecessary dichotomization of the material and the Divine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to offer an assessment of the main coordinates of Simon Nelson Patten's views on democracy and biological determinism. This will allow us to better delineate the differences—as well as the affinities—between Patten and the core of progressives discussed by Thomas C. Leonard in a series of path-breaking contributions, culminating in his Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era. It is our contention that even within the persisting intricacies, ambiguities, and contradictions of Patten's expository style, it is possible to trace a shift in some aspects of his ideas—a gradual evolution that makes his peculiar brand of progressivism different from that of his most "illiberal" counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Despite obesity declared a disease, there still exists considerable weight stigma in both popular culture and health care, which negatively impacts policy making regarding prevention and treatment. While viewed as a choice or a failure of willpower by many, evidence exists to challenge the argument that both weight gain and failure to achieve weight loss maintenance are the individuals' fault due to personal failure or lack of responsibility. In this article, we draw upon literature from obesity treatment, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and weight stigma to challenge the commonly held beliefs that individuals are free to choose how much they can weigh, and achievement of long‐term weight loss maintenance is completely subject to conscious choice. In reality, the regulation of hunger, satiety, energy balance, and body weight takes place in subcortical regions of the brain. Thus, hunger and satiety signals are generated in regions of the brain, which are not associated with conscious experience. This points towards biological determinism of weight and challenges ideas of willpower and resultant moralization regarding body weight regulation. In this article, we will thus argue that in the context of dysregulation of hunger and satiety contributing to the obesity epidemic, a wider discourse related to personal responsibility and the stigma of obesity is needed to enhance understanding, prevention, and treatment of this complex disease. Obesity is a chronic disease requiring personalized treatment. Lifestyle interventions alone may not be enough to achieve medically significant and sustained weight loss for many individuals with obesity. By understanding that obesity is not due to a lack of motivation or willpower, the availability and utilization of additional treatments or combination of treatments such as lifestyle, pharmacotherapy, and surgery are likely to improve the quality of life for many suffering with this disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada has often been seen as a progressive country that is welcoming to immigrants, promotes multiculturalism, and generally as a kind and tolerant society. This study used a two-month close examination of Canada's RWE online presence surrounding the 2019 federal election. Using social network analysis, this study fills a needed empirical gap in current understanding of this network that are known to produce and sustain domestic terrorism and extremist hate crimes in Canada. Then using both discourse and correspondence analysis, we find that Canada's Right-Wing Extremists (RWEs) galvanize around the following key ideas: leftist-propensities towards violence, projecting especially views against the Antifa, anti-immigration, media corruption and dishonesty, anti-elite and anti-establishment values, anti-liberalism, populism, anti-LGBT, anti-environmentalism, biological determinism, white victimization, and anti-consumerism. By determining Canadian RWE's ties, location and ideas our findings reveal that many RWE leaders are seen as authoritative for their views in the network and create content and community, potentially inciting active participation. As social contagion theory reminds us, these authorities in the RWE network may inspire others into concrete violent action and are of great concern to public safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in technoscience and biotechnology have blurred the boundaries between body and matter, emphasising the urgency of rethinking the intertwining of anthropocentrism, Eurocentrism and androcentrism. This repositing also involves the relationship between the subject and technological otherness. For example, in the representation of cyborgs, Donna Haraway identifies the metaphor of overcoming biological determinism. Simultaneously, in cinematic and literary imagery, cybernetic bodies end up representing contemporary society's changes, fears and desires, exploring new paradigms of subjectivity. This paper focuses on cyborg identities in Japanese imagery through the novels Kachikujin Yapoo (Yapoo the Human Cattle, 1956) by Shōzō Numa, Nippon Apacchi Zoku (The Japanese Apache Tribe, 1964) by Komatsu Sakyō and the film Tetsuo (Iron Man, 1989) by director Tsukamoto Shin'ya. Each of these works presents the search for transhuman and post-human subjectivities in Japanese science fiction imagery from the post-war to the postmodern period and share a masochistic representation of male bodies deeply interwoven with the question of identity. Starting from Tatsumi Takayuki's theorization of «creative masochism» and referring to the Deleuzian view on masochism, the aim of this paper is to investigate the connections between male masochism and Japanese cyborg imagery of the post-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on Kaitlyn Farrell Rodriguez's award-winning analysis of Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire," focusing on the play's critique of the American eugenics movement. Topics include the portrayal of dependency in the play as a critique of eugenicist ideals, Williams's evolution of the characters and themes through multiple drafts, and the enduring relevance of the play's themes to contemporary issues of bodily autonomy and social justice.

William Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “Sympathy,” peer through black naturalism’s socially deterministic lens, despite conflicts in time, geopolitics, social norms, and literary imagination. Specifically, Don John’s truculent reference about “sing[ing] in his cage” (1.3.32) inspired investigation into whether Dunbar’s famed line, “I know why the caged bird sings” (21), intentionally alludes to Shakespeare’s work. While the research is inconclusive, the references provide clarity for Don John’s character particularly. Essentially, Don John’s foolhardy evil meets society’s standards for masking social truths, just as Dunbar’s poem has been reduced to a sweet and imaginative ditty over time. Thus, this article broadly explores society’s tendency to recycle oppression under expedient pretenses. Although Don John self-proclaims inherent evil, closer scrutiny of his figurative scar – coat of arms, representing illegitimacy – reveals a socially determined position, more consistent with Dunbar’s second-rate life based on skin color and his naturalism based on whiteness. Because Mowat and Werstine suggest that Don John’s ill-intentioned behaviors are less about biology (blood) than impassioned human response to social injustice (Blood), naturalism links the unlikely pair. As such, the article uses Dunbar’s black naturalism to exemplify societal “caging” in Much Ado and “Sympathy.”

Determinist thought with its sui generis view on life, nature and being as a whole is a point of view that could be observed in many different cultures and beliefs. It was thanks to Greek thought that it ceased to be a cultural element and transformed into a systematic cosmology. Schools such as Leucippos, then Democritos and Stoa attempted to integrate the determinist philosophy into ontology and cosmology. In the course of time, physics and metaphysics-based determinism approaches were introduced, and a wide spectrum has emerged from genetics to behaviorism, from culture to psychology, from atomism to divinity. Determinism, whether physical or metaphysical origin, ignores freedom of will and deny agency competence over human behavior. Due to this feature, it is opposed by ethical theories, legal philosophies and religions. When the arguments for determinism are possible to disprove logically and philosophically, this is not so easy when the claims base themselves on scientific base. As the logical consequence of this novel fact, it is important to question the epistemological value of scientific knowledge and critically analyze the data of experiments and clinical studies in terms of methodology when answering any hypothesis such as neuro-biological, neuro-psychological, or neuro-theological argumentations. On the other hand, it is necessary to reach alternative experiments on the same subject or to show that it is possible to interpret them in different ways, as in the example of the Libet experiment. The neurobiological determinism based on biological reductionism, emerged as the result of ignoring the ontological difference of the mind, equating the mind with the brain, or defining mentality as an epiphenomenon of the brain. The main divergence stems from the acceptance of materialist philosophy. Paradigms that reduce existence only to matter do not take the metaphysical possibilities into account. In this case, although the problems called qualia or subjective experience stand there unresolved, the claim is preserved. Although many new developments such as the discovery of the entropy law, the big bang theory, and quantum physics have shaken the materialist philosophy, modern science resists an epistemological revision. However, with the current epistemology, it does not seem possible to grasp both the universe and the being as a whole. This is the most important reason why every attempt to understand the nature and spiritual side of human beings fails despite numerous experiments on the brain. However, the human brain is an organ that seems sophisticated and its secrets cannot be easily solved. Since there is not enough information about the brain, there is not enough evidence to claim that the brain, and therefore the mind, are part of the deterministic universe. Increasing brain researches since the last quarter of the twentieth century has revealed that genes, neurons and particularly brain chemistry claim much greater role than expected in human behavior. These results have been instrumentalized by some researchers for a radical claim that free will is an illusion, while by others it has led to the acceptance of will as less important over actions than was thought. Both ideas adopted a model of biological determinism in which freedom of will was ignored. Hypotheses based on controversial interpretations of various experiments raised concerns about religious, moral, and legal responsibility. Although man cannot be thought of as a non-free being from the point of view of common sense, the smog screen over the truth would not be lifted unless the scientific data in question had a correct interpretation. At first glance, it seems unreasonable to discuss universal determinism in the quantum universe. Nevertheless, the claim that strong causality prevails in the material world, including consciousness, remains in place. Therefore, firstly criticizing determinism and then examining biological determinism will help to fix the conceptual framework. This article aims to explain why genetics and neurobiology, while acknowledging their importance in the realization of behavior, can't completely abolish moral agency. Some hypotheses attribute consciousness and free will to the physico-shimic structure of the brain, the random activity of neurons, or the ability to automatically transform inputs into outputs with the advantage of genetic information. This is the most sensitive and important point of being human; it attacks free will. Paradoxically, while global civilization of our time promises infinite freedom to human beings the science of the same age tries to prove that it is not free. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: It is important that intervention programmes are accessible and acceptable for groups most affected by excess weight. This study aimed to understand the barriers to and facilitators of engagement for Māori in a community‐based, assessment‐and‐intervention healthy lifestyle programme (Whānau Pakari). Methods: Sixty‐four in‐depth, home‐based interviews were conducted with past service users. Half of these were with families with Māori children and half with non‐Māori families. The interviews were thematically analysed with peer debriefing for validity. Results: Māori families experienced barriers due to racism throughout the health system and society, which then affected their ability to engage with the programme. Key barriers included the institutionalised racism evident through substantial structural barriers and socio‐economic challenges, the experience of interpersonal racism and its cumulative impact with weight stigma, and internalised racism and beliefs of biological determinism. Responses to these barriers were distrust of health services, followed by renewed engagement or complete disengagement. Participants identified culturally appropriate care as that which was compassionate, respectful, and focused on relationship building. Conclusions: While Whānau Pakari is considered appropriate due to the approach of the delivery team, this is insufficient to retain some Māori families who face increased socio‐economic and structural barriers. Past instances of weight stigma and racism have enduring effects when re‐engaging with future health services, and inequities are likely to persist until these issues are addressed within the health system and wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Electrónica de Enseñanza de las Ciencias is the property of Revista Electronica de Ensenanza de las Ciencias and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Long time after its first occurrence, the phrase "social Darwinism" meant the application of Darwinian ideas to the study of social phenomena, in order to explain some of them in terms of biological determinism and initially did not necessarily have the negative and pejorative meaning it has today, when it is used by some theorists exclusively to stigmatize the ideas of political, ideological and scientific opponents. The current negative meaning prevailed with the publication, in 1944, of Richard Hofstadter's book, Social Darwinism in American Thought, and equates social Darwinism with a conservative, reactionary ideology, closely associated with individualism, racism, inequality, nationalism and with the capitalism of unrestricted economic competition. Was Charles Darwin himself a "social Darwinist"? The answer depends on the meaning we associate with the concept, and thus I tried to prove that it had multiple and fluctuating meanings over time, so that the phrase is often used partially or even totally inadequate in relation to the ideas professed by those to whom it is applied. I therefore argued that we need to show caution both in the use of the phrase "social Darwinism" and in the uncritical acceptance of its association with a number of authors and theories that, due to the largely ideological rather than scientific way in which the term is used today, are thus exposed a priori to public disavowal, as soon as everything that is considered to belong to the category of social Darwinism automatically becomes scientifically and politically unacceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we ask what sex is, we ask what it means to be human. It is a simple yet powerfully disruptive and generative question with far-reaching implications. Fortifying perennial dualisms, the study of sexuality and gender is historically reified or rendered immaterial across the social and natural sciences. While considering often polarized perspectives at once, this article argues for a necessary tension in which sexual embodiment is understood as a fundamental entanglement of being. This perceptual shift requires a reconceptualization of philosophy's central dualism between biological and environmental determinism and an interrogation of the space between the normative and nonnormative. In exploring the bases for a richly textured embodied sexuality both inside and outside discursive binaries, this article employs an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon biological and evolutionary theories of sexuality and gender, philosophies of existence, deconstructionist critiques, and queering attention to the divergent otherized dimensions of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Oficina do Historiador is the property of EDIPUCRS - Editora Universitaria da PUCRS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man was suffused with questions of courtship, mating and sex. Following in his footsteps, biologists throughout the twentieth century interrogated the sexual behaviour of humans and animals. This paper charts the fate of evolutionary theories of sexuality to argue that – despite legal and social gains of the past century – when biologists used sexual selection as a tool for theorizing the evolution of homosexual behaviour (which happened only rarely), the effect of their theories was to continuously reinscribe normative heterosexuality. If, at the end of the nineteenth century, certain sex theorists viewed homosexuality as a marker of intermediate sex, by the late twentieth a new generation of evolutionary theorists idealized gay men as hypermasculine biological males whose sexual behaviours were uncompromised by the necessity of accommodating women’s sexual preferences. In both cases, normative assumptions about gender were interwoven with those about sexuality. By the twenty-first century, animal exemplars were again mobilized alongside data gathered about human sexual practices in defence of gay rights, but this time by creating the opportunity for naturalization without recourse to biological determinism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Chilena de Derecho is the property of Revista Chilena de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the influence of racial prejudice on enlightened thought, and its relations with modern biological determinism. The recent history of this theory and its links with racism are examined, and its origins in relation to bourgeois ideology are investigated. The role of slavery in John Locke's philosophy is analyzed, and the impact, in colonial dynamics, of the first scientific works oriented to classify the human races is studied. Immanuel Kant's ideas on racial differences are reviewed, showing how they helped to legitimize European colonial projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers believe that our ordinary English words man and woman are "gender terms," and gender is distinct from biological sex. That is, they believe womanhood and manhood are not defined even partly by biological sex. This sex/gender distinction is one of the most influential ideas of the twentieth century on the broader culture, both popular and academic. Less well known are the reasons to think it's true. My interest in this paper is to show that, upon investigation, the arguments for the sex/gender distinction have feet of clay. In fact, they all fail. We will survey the literature and tour arguments in favor of the sex/gender distinction, and then we'll critically evaluate those arguments. We'll consider the argument from resisting biological determinism, the argument from biologically intersex people and vagueness, the argument from the normativity of gender, and some arguments from thought experiments. We'll see that these arguments are not up to the task of supporting the sex/gender distinction; they simply don't work. So, philosophers should either develop stronger arguments for the sex/gender distinction, or cultivate a variety of feminism that's consistent with the traditional, biologically-based definitions of woman and man. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational researchers, more times than not, rely on explanations steeped in cultural or biological determinism in order to describe and explain student behavior and the impact of educational environments on said behavior. Nevertheless, given the interplay of biological, psychological, and sociological systems that act on the individual, it is unlikely that the topical intransigence surrounding the study of learning environments will be resolved unless future investigations consider all these elements. Through the present study, we examined how student biology interacts with single and mixed-sex environments testing 25 participants in both conditions. A mixed factor ANOVA revealed a significant interaction between cortisol, condition, and sex with further analysis showing that female cortisol level rose and then declined. Males did just the opposite in the presence of same-sex counterparts. Through an examination of a single physiological response (cortisol), we highlight the largely unexplored interactions among biological and environmental factors in the study of educational environments. An interactionist approach that involves drawing appropriately from multiple disciplines will help to redefine problems outside standard boundaries of educational research and reach practical solutions based on a new understanding of complex situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Thélème is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This document is the editor's preface for a special issue of the Çankaya University Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences. The issue focuses on Wilkie Collins and commemorates the bicentenary of his birth. The articles in the issue were originally presented at the 26th METU British Novelists International Conference in Ankara, which explores a different British author each year. The keynote speaker for the conference was Professor Andrew Mangham from the University of Reading, who contributed an article to this special issue on the intersection of Collins's work with the sciences of health and wellbeing. The editor expresses gratitude to the authors, referees, and contributors for their scholarly contributions and support. [Extracted from the article]

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This essay seeks to explain how Ashley Montagu, the American anthropologist, could have been both a cultural relativist and a biological determinist, two stances that seem to be opposites. The essay argues that the seeming contradiction can be resolved by placing Montagu in his historical contexts and by understanding what he meant by "biological determinism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article redresses the interpretative lacunae of historians' conceptions of Nazi racism by overcoming their attempts to comprehend it from either a secular/scientific or a religious/theological perspective. Drawing on a variety of anthropological, philosophical, and political-theoretical works, the article illustrates how Nazi racial ideas were formulated not only in accordance with the latest discoveries in the field of human heredity, but also in correspondence to contemporary debates over secularization, value-free science, and biological determinism. It argues that the Nazi conception of race constituted a new form of religiosity , which did not draw on supernatural beliefs or theological narratives, but rather on vitalist-oriented metaphysics, shifting the object of faith from the transcendent realm of God to the immanent sphere of racial inwardness. Redefining faith in vitalist-existentialist terms corresponded with the Nazi aspiration to overcome the fragmentation of modernity, overturn the nihilistic threat posed by materialist society, and carry out a spiritual renaissance built upon immanent-biological foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Educational Psychology is the property of International Journal of Educational Psychology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Police organizations are historically and predominantly male organizations; as such, the purpose of this study is to examine the role of women in Irish policing. The literature review will analyze gender-specific organizational literature, focused on the United States. Theoretical components include biological determination and social constructivism in the policing context. The study is conducted through qualitative interviews and thematic analysis of 10 current and former Gardaí in Ireland. This study empirically contributes to how the organization views gender and how those differences are institutionalized in that Gardaí are treated differently based on their gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the rapidly developing field of epigenetics, providing an accessible explanation of the key ideas and some illustrative examples of work in the field. Although very much a biological discipline the implications of the developing knowledge in this area are very significant for educational psychologists and this paper aims to provide an introduction to what is becoming a very significant shift in how people think about learning and development. Understanding the processes that underlie epigenetic change and the research that the new knowledge is based on will be important for educational psychologists in order to understand this important developing area of thinking about development and learning. Consensus is growing that intergenerational transmission of epigenetic changes are a reliable phenomenon, establishing the principle of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This contrasts starkly with models of biological determinism and provides a new way of thinking about educational and societal change.

The optimism of radical constructivism is contrasted with the relative pessimism of biological determinism in the context of educating young children. The plasticity of the learning brain is contrasted with the relatively fixed intelligence view linked to IQ testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender studies in Russian linguistics largely depend on the development of linguistics and society. Instances of sexism in the Russian language are associated with the level of grammar and observed in proverbs and gender clichés. The author examines differences in communicative styles characteristic of women and men in oral and written speech and consider cases of gender predetermination of language.

Debate over the origins of sexuality has animated a great deal of research on homosexuality, centering largely on whether sexuality is biologically determined or socially constructed. The contours of this debate have important ramifications regarding experiences of marginalization within the gay imagined community. Dominant discourses of sexuality can flatten and obscure differences within this community, and these discourses are often connected to essentialist notions of the origins of homosexuality. Nonetheless, the mechanisms through which essentialist notions affect non-heterosexual individuals' understandings of sexual identity and of the gay community remains somewhat unclear. Through analysis of interviews with 29 non-heterosexual men, I find evidence of essentialist logic concerning not only origins but also race, nationality, class, and sexual identity/preference. I synthesize these by advancing the concept of gay essentialism , arguing for a more intersectional approach to the concept that deemphasizes debate over origins. I also examine how gay essentialist logic helps to (re)produce and obscure inequality.